


to those who dwell in realms of day

by annperkinsface



Series: tea and swords [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 08:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annperkinsface/pseuds/annperkinsface
Summary: Even with his eyes closed Vergil can feel Nero's gaze like a palpable thing. The sharpness, the intent. His cheek still aches from Nero's welcoming blow but his split lip has healed. When Vergil smiles, a thin curl of the lips, he can feel the phantom sting. “What a warm reception.”“Kyrie got you tea, didn't she? Asshole,” Nero says but there is no real heat. How curious. “You better drink every last drop, old man, or there will be hell to pay.”





	to those who dwell in realms of day

The light is softer here in Nero's home. Vergil closes his eyes, standing by the window, relishing it on his face. He'd hardly been returned to himself before they were back in the dregs of hell. Here in the human realm there is light, another thing he had taken for granted, another thing he'd never thought to miss before those long, grueling decades spent as a prisoner in his own body and mind. Foolishness, he thinks, but Vergil doesn't budge an inch. He remains in that pocket of light with his face upturned, savoring its warmth.

Even with his eyes closed Vergil can feel Nero's gaze like a palpable thing. The sharpness, the intent. His cheek still aches from Nero's welcoming blow but his split lip has healed. When Vergil smiles, a thin curl of the lips, he can feel the phantom sting. “What a warm reception.”

“Kyrie got you tea, didn't she? Asshole,” Nero says but there is no real heat. How curious. “You better drink every last drop, old man, or there will be hell to pay.”

Old man. It sits uneasily in Vergil's chest to be called the same thing Nero calls Dante, his voice full of a history he and Nero don't share. _V_ , he had called Vergil once, or rather the face his humanity had worn. _Father_ another and Vergil's heart had reluctantly stirred even as he refused to bow to its whims. Vergil opens his eyes to regard the boy in front of him. Those narrowed eyes, that sullen mouth, twisting mutinously under Vergil's gaze. His son. A word that meant nothing until it was Nero and then it meant entirely too much. “I suppose I’ll have to indulge you,” Vergil concedes. “We've only just gotten back from hell. I have no desire to return over tea.”

Nero sneers. “Whose fault is that? You could've just cut your way out of hell at any time. Hope you enjoyed your all expense paid free vacation while the rest of us cleaned up the mess you left behind."

“I'd hardly call spending every waking moment with Dante a vacation.”

“Call it what you like,” Nero says. “I don't care. But it sure as hell didn't leave you two in much of a hurry to head back here, now did it?"

Nero's humanity shows all too clearly in moments like these. Beneath the bluster is the soft tissue of a heart that is easy enough to see once you know how to look and Vergil's looking now, watching Nero shift uneasily on his feet before scowling and looking back with defiance to cover up his vulnerability. He would have recoiled at such weakness once but he can't bring himself to think of Nero as weak even when Nero’s eyes demand things that Vergil isn’t sure he can give. Any softness in him had been carved out decades ago when his childhood burned down around him and he was left to fend for himself. He's been a ghost and he's been a prisoner and he hasn't been Vergil in so long he can hardly recall what that means to him much less someone else. He's been splintered into so many pieces.

But Nero had helped gather up those pieces, had helped reassemble Vergil into someone who was if not whole then remarkably close to it. Nero had looked at a stranger and extended kindness a second time, had looked at the wretch that cut off his arm, the man that was his father, and was fierce, unyielding that no one would die, not even the one he once thirsted for vengeance towards. Hadn’t Vergil reconciled himself to fate? He would kill Dante or Dante would kill him and that would be that. But Nero had refused, burning impossibly bright, human in all the ways he had once scorned and more than that all at the same time. A power that is all his own. The strength to protect, Vergil thinks, and his lips don’t so much as curdle at such a sentimental line of thinking. Pride for someone else is strange, unfamiliar, but he feels it now, just as strongly as he did then.

He has no right to it but he feels it all the same.

“We had a score to settle,” Vergil says. “If Dante says he's in the lead he's a damn liar. We're even.”

“Idiots,” Nero says, shaking his head, but there’s the flicker of a smile tugging at his mouth: here one moment, gone the next. His mouth is flat again in no time and he pins Vergil with an unimpressed look. “Stop lurking like a weirdo and sit down and drink your tea before you really make me mad.”

Vergil sits, setting aside Yamato reluctantly. Nero sits across from him, taking a biscuit from a plate and dunking it into his waiting teacup before biting into it. The table is well set. Nero and Kyrie may not have much but they obviously take great care of what they do have. “I don’t lurk,” he says, only slightly huffily.

“Yeah? That time in the garage begs to differ.”

“Nero,” Vergil says. What has sounded at home in his mouth now tastes stale with regret. He didn't name this boy but Vergil can't imagine him being called anything else.

“Don't,” Nero says sharply. “Just don't. Phantom limb's a bitch, okay? It still is, which is the fucked up thing. I have how many arms now? And my brain's still hung up on one that grew back!"

Vergil says nothing. There is nothing that can be said, nothing that can undo what has already been done. Nero senses this because he scoffs and reaches for another biscuit, dunking it in his cup with vigor. He finishes another one off and takes a sip from his teacup, looking at Vergil over the rim and pausing, his eyebrows pulling together. He says, “Drink your fucking tea, asshole.”

Vergil drinks under Nero's hawk eyes. The tea has cooled but the blend is satisfactory. Outside there is the sound of children’s laughter and it doesn't make Vergil wistful in the least, doesn't make him wonder about Nero's childhood, doesn't make him picture this ferocious boy in the yard of the orphanage, small in size but all too ready to bare his teeth, getting in trouble with the caretakers for mouthing off, picking fights. The handful he must have surely been.

“You’re smiling,” Nero says, sounding mystified. “Tea that good?”

“Perhaps,” Vergil says, mastering his expression. He takes another pull from his tea while Nero scoffs. The cup is all but empty.

"Nice to see your inability to give straight answers hasn't changed from when you were V.”

“It’s more than palatable,” Vergil says. “Happy?”

Nero snorts. “With you? Never,” he says but he looks pleased and for all that Vergil sees shades of Dante and himself in Nero it is that openness of expression that reminds him of someone else entirely. Mother had been fierce but kind, as open with her love as she had been everything else, never ashamed by the depth of her own feeling. Nero's heart mirrors hers more than Vergil's ever did. And if Vergil's throat aches at the thought, the memory, still uncomfortably close after all this time, well. No one is the wiser.

Nero scrapes back his chair and stands up, hefting Red Queen over his shoulder. “C’mon, old man,” he says. “You should be healed up by now. Time for a rematch.”

Vergil blinks, smirks. He gets to his feet. “So eager to lose? Very well.” He picks up Yamato, returning her to her sheath. Even not having yet crossed blades with Nero she hums with a peculiar resonance at his proximity, remembering the boy who had once harbored her. “It's been a while since I've had a worthy opponent."

Nero looks momentarily startled, a far cry from the boy who had demanded Vergil accept his strength, his existence. He scratches his nose with his other hand, returning Vergil's smirk with one of his own. "What, the demons in hell not a good workout for you?"

"Mere pests," Vergil says, scoffing. "Nothing of significance."

“Significant, huh,” Nero says, voice strangely soft for a fleeting moment before his face cracks into another smirk and it turns arrogant. "Hope you’re ready for your second ass kicking today, _Father_."

He says it with a mocking lilt but it takes all of Vergil's iron control to not jerk in surprise all the same. There his oft ignored heart goes, stirring at one word in one voice from the one person who matters. Nero. His son. The muscles in his face twitch, wanting to smile. Vergil lets his lips curl, lets the warmth touch his eyes.

"You're more than welcome to try."

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> nero: I don't care
> 
> nero: you better drink kyrie's tea or so help me
> 
> anyway it took weeks of hurting my brain over characterization but i finally figured this shit out lmfao. who knew forcing myself to write in vergil's pov was the answer.


End file.
